The Nexus Podcast

“There's definitely still venture capital money out there looking for great companies, especially in the smart building space. As long as you have a clear thesis and value proposition and your tech addresses a need of a building owner/operator, you're going to pass this deeper diligence with flying colors." —Jeanne Casey My Highlights The economic environment that startups are in today (4:46) To w...

"Real estate owners buy and sell assets and drive yield. So we needed to reframe little "e", the discussion on electrons, and expand into big "E", environmental social governance. Doing so helped the real estate owner understand not commodities, but yield and risk in return." —Matt Ellis My Highlights Measurabl’s founding story (2:10) From "meter" to "market" (7:59) Journey to decarbonization (12:...

“Step one (of 3) on reducing embodied carbon emissions is to start thinking about if we have to build a building at all. So if we just stopped building right now, there's plenty of empty space for us to put all that square footage into that we say we need. And beyond that, we have more than we need." —Stacy Smedley My Highlights Quick overview of Stacy's background - lots of activities! (2:02) A p...

“They're doing the same thing they did last year, but now it's called decarbonization. But the reality is, is that they are decarbonizing buildings. The work that we've been doing for 20 years is the right work to be doing we just don't have a metric to measure ourselves against and a way to value that work." —McGee Young My Highlights The problem and why McGee started WattCarbon (14:35) The trans...

“We see an expansion of robots doing 80% of a job in the service sector, allowing humans to do what's complex." —Greg Scott My Highlights SRT Labs (5:00) Use cases for robots  (11:17) "Smart" definitions in the context of robots (19:49) Robotic product adoption (23:14) Problems unique to the federal sphere (41:58) Map-based data collection (46:54) The parallels and connection points with smart bui...

“There's a lot of complexity that goes into building a technology that simplifies things for people." —Aaron Block My Highlights Aaron’s background (2:50) The #1 way to unlock decarbonization of commercial buildings (17:19) The problem is complexity (28:16) How energy as a service differs from the ESCO model (38:55) Fuel switching (50:43) Current tech making it simple (55:05) Carveouts (1:03:11) Y...

“We can accomplish both sustainability and IAQ, but we need to think holistically. And we need to think in terms of layered strategies and frameworks." —Christian Weeks Highlights enVerid's founding story (4:53) How enVerid's whitepaper came to be (18:53) Step 1: define goals (26:18) Defining acceptable IAQ and which metrics to monitor (32:01) CO2 (38:24) Step 2 - clean indoor air (43:35) Step 3 -...

“In the beginning of their journey to a smart building, many of our clients are wondering what they need to buy to check the box. We've flipped that so that the conversation looks at the experiences, outcomes, and capabilities that are meaningful to the organization. Then we can look at the technology." —Charlie Buscarino My Highlights Charlie’s background (2:43) Asking the smart building question...

“My 80/20 rule is that it's 20% of technology—and there are a lot of technologies in a smart building. And it's 80% about people and human engineering." —Bruce Duyshart My Highlights Bruce’s background (1:11) Meld's key projects (13:24) Horizontal architecture: converged network, data platform, apps  (16:44) How Bruce defines a smart building (23:01) Bruce's 80/20 rule (27:50) The consultant’s rol...

“I don't know as much as a tax consultant by a long shot, but for most cases with TurboTax, 90% of the cases, I was good. The 10% of the cases, I'm definitely not good and I will need a tax consultant and all of that good stuff. That was really what I wanted to build for the energy modeling community, where for the 90% of the cases we can get pretty darn close." —Sandeep Ahuja My Highlights cove.t...

“Why isn't everybody that's using energy accurately collecting data on the source of their energy and also the use of their energy? And then saying, what is the accurate carbon footprint of that energy? And what, if anything, should I be doing about it?" —Lincoln Payton My Highlights The founding story of Cleartrace (5:35) Why data is so important for decarbonization (11:22) How we go from old sta...

“Complacency is no longer a viable option. If you're looking around and you're seeing your third parties getting carte blanche access to your networks inside of your building, it's time to do something about it. If you have open ports exposed to the public internet, it's time to do something about it. There's a better way to do it." —Jim Anthony My Highlights How were things done before Zero Trust...

“I was building buildings. I was running a large portfolio. And the number one brick wall I kept running into was technology silos. There were 8 to 10 things I had to buy for everyone of those buildings, and they didn't talk to each other..." —Prasan Kale My Highlights Founding and acquisition story of Rise (5:48) What is VTS? (10:32) VTS acquired Lane Technologies (13:32) Use cases for integratio...

“In 1973, the value proposition was to keep bad people out. If no one has been shot in your building, it's working. That still remains, but the industry is evolving from that core principle." —Lee Odess My Highlights The history of access control systems (3:26) Components to access control systems (7:42) The Six Phase Changes Shaping Access Control (24:23) The verticalization of occupant experienc...

“One perspective is I don't see wires anymore. Still, in the backend, there are lots of wires and there are lots of different wireless connectivity and frequencies and technologies that support building systems. So the term wireless can refer to a number of technologies. And I think that's where people will get confused in terms of, what is wireless? Cellular vs. WiFi vs. LoRaWAN or other protocol...

“The environment that we've been in for many years and that we are currently in and heading into is very relevant for what's going on in the space, beyond the fact that smart buildings is highly fragmented and there is natural momentum towards M&A and rolling up a lot of these point solutions or single players from just an industry perspective." —Jeanne Casey My Highlights The general environment...

“As we draw down the operational carbon side of things, our embodied carbon piece of the pie is going to be closer to 50% of overall carbon emissions from the building sector." —Carmel Pratt My Highlights Bright Power (6:18) How to think about what percentage of a building owner's carbon footprint is operational vs embodied (8:58) How to balance embodied carbon and operational carbon (20:14) Key t...

"I like the buildings industry because it's a physical manifestation of our values. A building that is truly net zero, set up to have composting, electric vehicle charging, bike racks that really protect your bike, is a physical manifestation of how much you value your employees. There's nothing better than taking the concept of bettering the environment and putting it into something real that you...

“The reason why less than 10% of the commercial building market actually use building automation can be summarized by just one factor. I could show you 20 images of every building control software or fault diagnostic software out there and it's exactly the same story. Whether it's a small IOT or big medicine, it's a product designed by college-educated building engineering who really think that th...

"Why would you get something that tracks consumption but doesn't include fault detection and diagnostics? Something that doesn't also include predictive analytics and performance optimization?" —Ryan Baxter My Highlights Why NYC real estate is so unique (8:49) Top 5 NYC PropTech startup pitfalls (13:57) NYSERDA's Real Time Energy Management Program (RTEM) (32:26) RTEM's Hackathon (58:04) Carveouts...

“ In the landscape of proptech there is such a lack of data and lack of access to our own data and our potential ability to make better investment and operational decisions. " —Jeanne Casey My Highlights About Nuveen and your role (6:52) An outsider’s perspective on the insides of real estate (13:03) The state of smart buildings and smart buildings venture capital (25:41) Thoughts on “head of inno...

“One of the things that COVID showed us is that so many people's buildings are not responsive to occupancy. So no matter how well you designed the building with efficient devices, not responding to occupancy is like leaving something on and walking away from it. It's basic sustainability of provide what's needed and don’t waste resources." —Donny Walker My Highlights Defining Low Voltage (2:53) Ne...

"Virtual engineering is an inevitability. It's not a, 'there may be a breakup of this vertically integrated stack, this monolithic stack that everybody owns.' It will happen." —Zach Denning Highlights How the software layer improves upon the existing control system (6:42) Building re-engineering (8:35) Combating the diminishing returns argument (14:33) Demystifying machine learning (25:11) How Han...

“The current state of climate reporting is a bit like choose your own adventure, but also grade your own paper." —Tegan Keele My Highlights Why carbon accounting and reporting is important (10:15) Why blockchain is needed (27:23) Nantum OS and what a building OS is (45:44) Carveouts (1:02:32) You can find Tegan and Sonu on LinkedIn. Watch on YouTube or read on the web. Get full access to Nexus.

“When I ask my team to put together an energy efficiency project, it's their job to get off the energy island and go get integrated into the other conversations that are happening when we plan a project." —Casey Collins My Highlights Casey's background (2:43) Duke's campus (5:40) Duke's decarbonization plan (9:20) The role of retrofits (18:32) The building operations world is drowning in disorgani...